If you’ve ever played golf, when your on the fairway and you have a large distance to cover, you grab your lowest iron in the bag because the 3-iron has the lowest angle which will produce the largest horizontal distance. Similarly, if you want to get the largest vertical distance, you’ll grab a wedge with the higher angle. Using the Vernier projectile launcher, this activity will task students to use knowledge of the unit circle and cos/sin functions to verify their calculations of which angles will produce the largest horizontal/vertical distances for projectile motion. Teacher has flexibility of changing concept of cannon in activity to any projectile motion that comes to mind. A few are golf, baseball, soccer, a cannon, throwing rocks into the river, etc.
